Post by yyyguy on Aug 19, 2021 11:07:46 GMT 8
Do you ever wonder why you were in a certain place at a certain time? Yes, another of my tall tales but true.
When I was 8 my father read me a news article about a man in South Australia who had been bitten by a great white. And survived. That man was Rodney Fox who went on to little known great fame as a shark advocate, inventing such things as cage and tube dives. He also consulted on Jaws the movee. Being an Austrophile child such things enthralled me and this little tale took a back seat in that great memory bank of the brain. Many years later I was living in SA in a suburb adjacent to, unbeknown to me, where the attack had taken place.
After 5 years of living in close proximity to my neighbour, despite our paths never crossing, a chance encounter led to a great friendship and I was introduced to her circle of friends. I used to bore them to death with true stories of near-deadly encounters with a variety of Aussie fauna but she could always counter me having been bitten by a tiger snake in days of yore, being at deaths door for several days and being pumped full of anti-venene at record levels, surviving losing only a toe and being deaf on one side.. Sadly she had the newspaper articles to prove it whereas I didn’t.
I’ve always been fond of silly novelties and one day in Smokemart there was a dashboard wobbler of a shark with 2 legs protruding from it’ mouth. Straight onto Ebay where I could probably get it cheaper. No, but I did find some shark stress balls with a single leg popping out when you squeezed it. Very silly but quite funny and I never gave it a second thought when I bought a dozen.
In due course I passed my neighbour’ exacting tests of being fit for polite company and one day she announced she needed a handbag (accessory male) for “Sunday lunch with the Foxes. I think you’ll like Rod.” And “we don’t talk about the shark attack.”
And so it came to pass that I sat down for lunch with another 9 people including THE Rodney Fox. His house is a tribute to sharks, actual jaws, carvings, sculptures, photos, books, you name it and all incredibly tastefully displayed. Oddly I had met his wife through work, knew his name was Rodney but I never twigged. Nobody talked sharks, in fact despite the surroundings people seemed to go out of their way not to bring up the subject. They were old friends and talked of shared experience from their youth, simpler times when you had simple freedoms to camp on the beach and light a fire.
But I did tell the story of the newspaper article and Rod kindly sold me one of his (very interesting) books with a personalised note and signature for my father.
“May I give you a gift, Rod? My neighbour has told me not to misbehave but I feel I must. Anyway, for reasons I can’t understand I went on Ebay and bought this”, handing him the shark stress ball. There were 8 shocked or horrified faces at the table as he took it, squeezed it and after a moment, laughed uproariously. Everyone joined in, even my neighbour' frown turned to an affectionate smile. (Remind me to tell you the tale of the tuna sandwiches one day).
Which brings me back to the title. How I ended up in Australia and subsequently SA is a tale of “accidental circumstances” which required me to be at a certain place at a certain time or events A-Z would not have happened. And there really were 20-something chance events that led to that day. But if you felt compelled to flip through a certain magazine that normally you wouldn’t consider or enter an arcade or shop, repeatedly and within that magazine or shop was the next “event” that would set you on the next step of the path of the childhood dream, well, is there something else out there?
So, what has this got to do with the world today? The last 2 years have been enormously disruptive, as they have for millions. We know and agree on why, what is happening and what it means. And as I reflect on these 2 years I think that A led to B, led to C and so on and once again that unseen higher or alternate being has prepared me for the next bit of my life. As several commenters have said on the new Cats they’ve seen tough men do terrible things and fear more will need to be done. Nobody is looking forward to what’s coming but tough men, like us, have done tough things before and we’ll do them again. It’s gone way past the point of how successful the evil ones are in their pursuit of the new world order, the point is they tried, for whatever reason and simply voting them out is insufficient. I wonder how many of these evil politicians will turn up at their polling stations on polling day?
When I was 8 my father read me a news article about a man in South Australia who had been bitten by a great white. And survived. That man was Rodney Fox who went on to little known great fame as a shark advocate, inventing such things as cage and tube dives. He also consulted on Jaws the movee. Being an Austrophile child such things enthralled me and this little tale took a back seat in that great memory bank of the brain. Many years later I was living in SA in a suburb adjacent to, unbeknown to me, where the attack had taken place.
After 5 years of living in close proximity to my neighbour, despite our paths never crossing, a chance encounter led to a great friendship and I was introduced to her circle of friends. I used to bore them to death with true stories of near-deadly encounters with a variety of Aussie fauna but she could always counter me having been bitten by a tiger snake in days of yore, being at deaths door for several days and being pumped full of anti-venene at record levels, surviving losing only a toe and being deaf on one side.. Sadly she had the newspaper articles to prove it whereas I didn’t.
I’ve always been fond of silly novelties and one day in Smokemart there was a dashboard wobbler of a shark with 2 legs protruding from it’ mouth. Straight onto Ebay where I could probably get it cheaper. No, but I did find some shark stress balls with a single leg popping out when you squeezed it. Very silly but quite funny and I never gave it a second thought when I bought a dozen.
In due course I passed my neighbour’ exacting tests of being fit for polite company and one day she announced she needed a handbag (accessory male) for “Sunday lunch with the Foxes. I think you’ll like Rod.” And “we don’t talk about the shark attack.”
And so it came to pass that I sat down for lunch with another 9 people including THE Rodney Fox. His house is a tribute to sharks, actual jaws, carvings, sculptures, photos, books, you name it and all incredibly tastefully displayed. Oddly I had met his wife through work, knew his name was Rodney but I never twigged. Nobody talked sharks, in fact despite the surroundings people seemed to go out of their way not to bring up the subject. They were old friends and talked of shared experience from their youth, simpler times when you had simple freedoms to camp on the beach and light a fire.
But I did tell the story of the newspaper article and Rod kindly sold me one of his (very interesting) books with a personalised note and signature for my father.
“May I give you a gift, Rod? My neighbour has told me not to misbehave but I feel I must. Anyway, for reasons I can’t understand I went on Ebay and bought this”, handing him the shark stress ball. There were 8 shocked or horrified faces at the table as he took it, squeezed it and after a moment, laughed uproariously. Everyone joined in, even my neighbour' frown turned to an affectionate smile. (Remind me to tell you the tale of the tuna sandwiches one day).
Which brings me back to the title. How I ended up in Australia and subsequently SA is a tale of “accidental circumstances” which required me to be at a certain place at a certain time or events A-Z would not have happened. And there really were 20-something chance events that led to that day. But if you felt compelled to flip through a certain magazine that normally you wouldn’t consider or enter an arcade or shop, repeatedly and within that magazine or shop was the next “event” that would set you on the next step of the path of the childhood dream, well, is there something else out there?
So, what has this got to do with the world today? The last 2 years have been enormously disruptive, as they have for millions. We know and agree on why, what is happening and what it means. And as I reflect on these 2 years I think that A led to B, led to C and so on and once again that unseen higher or alternate being has prepared me for the next bit of my life. As several commenters have said on the new Cats they’ve seen tough men do terrible things and fear more will need to be done. Nobody is looking forward to what’s coming but tough men, like us, have done tough things before and we’ll do them again. It’s gone way past the point of how successful the evil ones are in their pursuit of the new world order, the point is they tried, for whatever reason and simply voting them out is insufficient. I wonder how many of these evil politicians will turn up at their polling stations on polling day?